THE  ALKALOIDS  AND  PROXIMATE  PRINCIPLES.  407 
THE  ALKALOIDS  AND  PROXIMATE  PRINCIPLES. 
By  James  C.  Ayer. 
Perhaps  no  subject  within  the  range  of  their  art  is  better  worth 
the  attention  of  pharmaceutists  at  the  present  time,  than  the  eli- 
mination of  the  curative  proximate  principles  of  medicine  into 
purity,  and  their  application  to  practical  purposes.  None  fail  to 
appreciate  the  value  of  those  which  have  been  reduced  to  common 
use,  while  all  seem  to  overlook  the  possible  importance  of  those 
that  have  not.  Morphine  is  not  more  superior  to  opium,  or  qui- 
nine to  bark,  than  are  the  active  principles  of  many  medicines 
over  the  crude  parent  drug  which  is  now  employed.  The  several 
deleterious  substances  present  with  morphia  in  opium,  prove  the 
superiority  of  that  alkaloid,  as  a  remedial  agent,  to  opium,  or  any 
preparation  of  it  that  could  be  made.  The  like  relative  value  is 
known  to  exist  in  so  many  other  cases,  that  it  may  be  safely  in- 
ferred for  a  large  proportion  of  all  the  drugs  whose  virtues  con- 
sist in  a  within  contained  alkaloid  or  proximate  principle. 
Since  almost  all  the  vegetable  remedies  do  owe  their  activity  to 
this  cause,  it  may  be  seen  how  large  a  proportion  of  all  the  medi- 
cines in  use  are  as  unskilfully  given  as  would  be  the  grinding  of 
corn,  cob,  husk,  stalk  and  root  into  meal,  while  the  kernel  only 
can  nourish. 
Many  valuable  curative  agents  are  so  encumbered  by  the  accom- 
panying deleterious  or  offensive  substances  with  which  they  exist, 
as  to  be  nearly  or  quite  useless.  This  was  true  of  the  cod-liver 
oil,  until  scientific  skill  had  succeeded  in  affording  it  to  the  market 
in  a  state  admissible  to  the  stomach ;  and  is  still  true  to  some  ex- 
tent of  the  castor  oil. 
True,  almost  every  article  of  medicine,  where  an  active  princi- 
ple could  be  looked  for,  has  been  submitted  to  the  searching  inves- 
tigations of  the  chemist,  whose  labors  have  given  us  more  or  less 
insight  into  the  composition  of  them  all.  Proximate  principles 
have  been  separated,  and  processes  given  for  their  preparation 
sufficiently  available  for  experimental  purposes.  Hence,  it  is  not 
the  discovery  which  is  needed  now,  but  the  application  of  disco- 
veries already  made. 
The  remedies  patent  to  improvement  are  too  numerous  and  too 
obvious  to  need  enunciation  here,  so  that  I  will  no  more  than  sug- 
